Elon's Tesla Board Drama, Microsoft and Meta Earnings, and Bezos Bends the Knee

23:51Yeah. Anyway, lastly, a federal judge dismantling Apple's control of the App Store in ruling said the Apple violated orders in a five-year antitrust case bought by Epic Games. In a previous ruling, the judge ordered Apple to allow apps to use external payments to avoid 30 % commission charges. The judge accused executives of lying, saying Apple created a new system forcing external sales to be charged 27 % commission. Now the judge says Apple may no longer take commissions from sales outside the App Store. Let me just say, I do not understand this because Apple won almost everything except this one thing, and they did not follow it along.

24:24Now, the App Store is a large part of Apple's$100 billion annual services revenue. I don't imagine it's an enormous flow because it's difficult to do those outside external sales. But it seemed like a real error on Apple's part here to do something petulant like this, given how much they won. The biggest toll boosts in the world are Google and arguably Apple's App Store. And to think your buddy, Barry Diller, summarized it perfectly. This is like a credit card company. The App Store provides infrastructure, payment technology, security, safety, a certain level of assurance that if something goes wrong, they vet the stores, they vet the consumers.

25:06credit card companies charge between 1.8 and 3%. Apple charges 30 or 15, I think, if it's recurring revenue. But they have such a lock, even though they have, I think, about 40 or 50 % market share in the US. I think they have closer to 80 or 90 % of actual revenue volume because anyone with any money has an iOS or people with most money have an iOS. So I've been saying this for a while, the best ways to oxygenate the economy would be to, one, for China and the U.S. to kiss and make up because everything would get 10 % cheaper around the world, but two, to basically bust up these toll booths and have other toll roads or other players.

25:43I mean, I don't know if you saw, in the wake of just monster earnings from Meta and Alphabet, Pinterest and Snap are just dying a slow death. I mean, no one can compete with their scale. So in the app store is just another example. I mean, you could easily break a great company in terms of a breakup would be Apple services, which would probably be the app store, their media. So why would they do this given they really did sort of win in this case, except for this one? I don't, I don't understand. What do you think? I think you have, you know them better than I do. I have no idea. It seems like, well, they just don't want to do it.

26:20I just don't want to do it. Like they're going to just challenge it. And now, of course, the judge is saying, well, they'll appeal it. These people know how to appeal, I guess. I assume that's what they're going to do. Anyway, it seems to be a real unusual error on their part to do something petulant. I mean, I can see petulants from Mark Zuckerberg or Bezos or any of them, but not Tim Cook. But here we are. But another real winner, though, and a player in this is, and I've been investing in them, is Epic. And they went up against Apple and sort of, I don't know if you'd say they won, but they didn't back down.

26:51And it doesn't appear... They didn't really win. It was more in Apple's favor, but in this case, now they're able to do what they want. We'll see how much that sticks. I mean, I think Apple's playing the very long game with Trump and everything else, the quiet long game. Anyway, okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break, going to get back. Microsoft met earnings, which we will discuss because they were pretty fantastic, and why Trump is getting compared to the Grinch who stole Christmas.

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29:13Scott, we're back. its forecast as high as$72 billion. This is mostly around AI. Of course, the weak spot continues to be that first shift that Mark made. Meta reported$4.2 billion in losses from its Reality Labs division. That's why they call themselves Meta. It also announced the launch of Meta AI this week. It's a standalone AI app, sort of to compete with ChatGPG. Makes sense. So far, the company's avoided getting dragged down by tariff chaos, which is interesting. We'll see if it goes on. Mark Zuckerberg addressed the concerns about tariff impact in his early call. saying, I think we're well positioned to weather the economic uncertainty.

29:47I think advertising is an open question. Just for people to know, Amazon and Apple earnings coming after we record, so we'll dig into those next week. But talk a little bit about these earnings, each company. Let's start with Microsoft. Staggering. Revenue is on a big base, up 13%. Their cloud revenue is up 20%. And what you have here, and also Microsoft is probably, I don't want to say it's a defensive stock, but it's least, it's kind of most recession proof. And also it doesn't seem to be subject to real damage other than a slowdown in the economy from these tariffs. And keep in mind, the majority of their biggest customers are global.

30:23So even if the U.S. gets hit, they're pretty well insulated. You know, Apple is going to take a hit if the tariffs continue to escalate. Amazon will absolutely take a hit. Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are more insulated because they're digital marketing, but Microsoft has exposure to the cloud. It's a very diversified, robust business. It's really well managed. Can I just say with Microsoft, Chachanadella, I think, even though he's the quietest of them. And by the way, if you've noticed, he hasn't sucked up to Trump. He's just doing his job, like kind of thing. And of course, his job doesn't have that much.

31:01The interaction they have has to do around national security and everything else. And they do have, let me tell you, that's where their big weakness is around security issues around their software, et cetera. But I have to say he deserves much more credit than almost any CEO in terms of really making this company shine. I'm always impressed with him and especially how he handles things. He manages not to lose his soul every five minutes. But go ahead on Meta, which I think is hugely impressive. Mark Zuckerberg really knows how to run a company. He really does. Oh, revenue increased 16 percent.

31:35And even, I think even more impressive, their price per ad was up 10%. If you're looking for how AI is impacting our economy, their ability to talk, I mean, don't you increasingly have more of those moments where you're thinking, my shoulders have been bothering me. And all of a sudden on reels, I'm getting served ads for bands to help with my shoulders. I'm like, how the fuck did they figure that out? But the amount of time in terms of serving you up incredible ads, their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35 % increase in time spent on threads, a 7 % increase in time spent on Facebook, 6 % on Instagram.

32:16He predicted or Zuck predicted AI would be able to handle half of Meta's developer work. So he's able to maintain, you know, other than CapEx around data storage and AI, their human capital costs have decelerated and aren't growing nearly as fast as their top line revenues, meaning that, quote unquote, earnings are going to explode. And just to give you a sense, I do this deck on AI. I think the AI company at 2025 is meta because, first off, if you look at it, 80 % of people in the world outside of China. But can I just know something? It's the best data. Like think about Twitter data. It's not good data.

32:54Like, you know, it's kind of all noisy, but this is all people moving and using and relatively behaving. I mean, there's all kinds of problems on this platform, obviously, but go ahead. Well, the peanut butter and chocolate or chocolate and peanut butter of AI is, loosely speaking, the chips, the processing power. They're the second biggest purchaser of chips. They're in line with the second biggest purchase order of NVIDIA chips. And then the chocolate is the actual data, the input, the coal in the furnace, whatever you want to call it, right? Grist to the mill. And just to give you a sense of just how much data is produced on meta platforms, Reddit, which is unbelievably accelerated, has the fifth most traffic of anyone in the U.S., any site in the U.S., Reddit is the source of roughly 1.3 trillion tokens of text, right?

33:401.3 trillion tokens of text. Meta, 180 trillion tokens. So Meta has more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from, and they're going to have the second most NVIDIA chips. In addition, they not only get the benefit of saying, all right, we're going to use that to have a consumer-facing product. Instead, or in addition to, we're going to use AI to give advertisers such extraordinary targeting at the right time for the right person in the right place, that advertisers are going to be helpless not to just reallocate more and more of their budgets to Meta. Yeah. He's too—look, we all have our issues with Mark Zuckerberg, and it's deserved, but man, can he—he's like a Gatesian figure.

34:28Remember how well Bill Gates ran during his many years? Brilliant businessman. Brilliant business person. He wore those glasses everywhere, the Meta glasses, which are popular. I don't think they're an enormous business for them, but he does the walk. I mean, he looked, he didn't look, he wore them everywhere this week, which was smart. It was smart that he did it. He didn't look as dumb as Elon looks in a hat. But I would agree. I think it's really astonishing how, what's happening. Like you were noting, and I was thinking about it the rest of the week, was Google has so many good businesses, you know, within this company.

35:01So does Facebook, right? And I like threads. I do, I do. I like it for, it feels like Instagram a little bit easier, like essentially. And I'm on Blue Sky. I like Blue Sky too, by the way. But there's so many good products in this term. I think the two dings on them obviously will be their deleterious effect on the entire world. And this trial, we'll see a lot of people, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people. Most people, and I agree, think it's a relatively weak case that they have competition now and they're just doing very well with the competition. but a lot of other people think they're going to lose and it's going to be like Microsoft, right?

35:40It's not going to really matter and they won't spin stuff off, but we'll see if they have to spin things off like an Instagram or a WhatsApp. It would certainly be interesting if they did, as you and I have talked about. Anyway, good job, Mark Zuckerberg. We have to give it to you. And again, we'll talk about Amazon and Apple earnings. We both think they're going to get hit. There's only just one thing in the Microsoft earnings that I thought were interesting in the earnings call, and that is their data storage expenditures coming down. And I wonder if some of them are thinking that DeepSeek, maybe there's an opportunity or maybe the data storage and the power consumption won't be as great as initially forecast.

36:22I think a lot of them are looking at the deep seek innovation and thinking, how does this impact our CapEx moving forward? But you're probably going to see in the back half of the year, even more staggering earnings because it feels like they have so much momentum on the top line. And yet on the expense side, I think they're going to maintain, I think their CapEx is going to go flat or maybe even down, which is just going to be like nitrone glycerin for their earnings. Yeah, we'll see about that. It'll be interesting. And it'll be interesting to compare Amazon and Apple with them. But speaking of economic uncertainty, President Trump is blaming former President Biden for the U.S.

37:01economy contracting in the first quarter of 2025, suggesting in this cabinet, this ridiculous cabinet meeting that Q2 will also be tied to Biden. He's going to blame Biden. He mentioned Biden like 912 times, or not that many, but a lot. But he's taking the same stance on markets, writing on True Social on Wednesday. This is Biden's stock market, not Trump's, even though he claimed it was Trump's stock market back in 2024 when he wasn't president. The market was doing well. He was calling it Trump's stock market. He's also telling Americans to be patient, but acknowledge there will be some consequences from his tariffs.

37:32Let's get to the doll situation. You know, somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know. and maybe the$2 will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. Oh my God, it's true. Whoever said that? This idea that, I mean, look, that may be true. I agree. I have too many fucking toys in my house and I wish I had like many less, but it's none of his business if people want$30. Americans are used to products on the shelves and open, whatever open means empty is the word he's looking for. Toy manufacturers are already warning about a Christmas toy shortage.

38:09factories in China produce nearly 80 % of all toys and 90 % of Christmas goods sold in the U.S.

38:18He's making a point, yes, we shouldn't consume as much. The man who consumes more than anybody, who's just like a giant maw of consumption, is lecturing people. His whole administration is doing this. They're very on message. Well, you don't need that stuff. You don't need it. And that may be, but how do you think it's going to hit with people, especially if there are empty shelves, not open shelves, but empty shelves. From a guy that golfs every third day and banks porn stars? He's talking to us about consumption. I know, and it shows off his gold in that Terry Moran interview, by the way. He showed off.

38:47Americans, we are the most conspicuous consumers in history. America is sort of, you'd argue, an insurance company with a military, but really what it is, it's a platform for prosperity where people get material and hopefully emotional gains from an incredible operating system. And you could argue that Biden was kicked out of office because the price of eggs went too high, but he doesn't think people are going to notice. 90 % of America is on a fixed budget. And if toys go up in price, 30, 40, 50%, that means a third to a half fewer toys. You don't think that's going to hit home emotionally when the kids start noticing, wait, you know, that just really hits you hard.

39:28It hits on an emotion where when you feel like you're not providing for your kids on key moments, it really rips at your soul. And people are going to get angry. Just the notion that, oh, Americans, that these people, that him with his tacky retrofitted 757, that somehow Americans, you know, don't need all this stuff? Well, okay, folks, Americans love their stuff. America is the land of stuff. We love our shit. There's nothing wrong with it, our Nespresso, our Netflix. We love stuff. And loosely speaking, actually, if you were to pick one thing that impacts the majority of elections in America for the last 50 years, it's kind of your safety and security around your ability to buy more stuff.

40:21It's the economy. And so that's just a ridiculous statement. So why did he make it? I mean, and then it was echoed by all his people. And then blaming Biden, obviously, he's going to use Biden as, you know, 10 years from now, he's going to say Biden was the reason. What is, I mean, I don't think people are thinking of Biden anymore, you know, or mentioning, although his voters have a very astonishing, they are now echoing this. There was a lot of interviews I saw where they're like, yeah, we got to buck up. Like we're in the middle of the war, too, and the Nazis are headed our way. Like that kind of mood of something like that.

40:54There is some truth to the notion that this GDP, this so GDP was off first negative quarter since I think 2022. First in three years, we had a contraction. I don't think it's fair to lay that at the feet of the Trump administration. GDP is a lagging indicator. The surge in imports because of these ridiculous tariffs took a large portion of the GDP down. Consumption is down too. Both things together. But go ahead. Next quarter, there's just no excuses. He owns it. And you're going to see a contraction. I don't like GDP. I don't think it's a good measure. But you're going to see the economy contract.

41:27And it's on its way. I'm doing a lot or a decent amount of – I have a lot of friends who are impacted by the tariffs. And essentially, like business has come to a standstill. and they're sitting around trying to guess, do we try to move? Do we go to our bank, borrow a shit ton of money, cut 20, 30 % of our workforce and spend the next three years trying to reroute our supply chain to Vietnam or Indonesia? Or do we hope this guy pops up, wakes up tomorrow morning and goes, just kidding. But in the meantime, they're in a state of paralysis. They have stopped all shipments from most of my friends from China.

42:02Shipping volume is off anywhere, depending on how you account for it, between 35 and 65 percent. The port of Los Angeles is less crowded than it's been in recent memory, and it's the largest port in the Western Hemisphere. And there's a lag effect, but when the ships coming into the port are empty or they're not coming in, that means in about four to 12 weeks, the stores are going to be empty, and also you're going to start to see layoffs. Yeah, because I just interviewed Wes Moore, who's the governor of Maryland, and a very handsome man, as you would say. Westmore, he's going to be a presidential candidate.

42:37And he was talking about the knock-on effects in Baltimore in terms of, like, truckers, unloaders, people around it, restaurants around it. It's just going to reverberate all over these economies in California, in Maryland, New York. You know, of course, these are all blue states. But still, it will have so much reverberations around the country. And then it just keeps having knock-on and knock-on effects. Anyway, I don't think he can keep blaming. I agree with you. He can blame them for a short time. But this is just nonsense lecturing people on how many dolls they should have. I agree that we shouldn't have so many choices.

43:14But that's my personal opinion. And he's the president of the United States. It's none of his business to tell people what to buy. It's like that Borat film, you know, 33 different types of cheeses. That's just who we are. The weird thing is, just going back to the earnings for a moment, you're probably going to see an increased bifurcation between the Magnum Business Hub and the rest of the economy because these firms... So Amazon is the most subject to this trade war than anyone because two-thirds of their business comes within the U.S. and a lot of their products are subject to tariffs. A company like Meta gets only one-third of its business from the U.S.

43:48and the majority of its products are not subject to tariffs. Apple, two-thirds from outside the U.S. A company like Microsoft, half their business comes from outside the U.S. So these companies are, I don't want to say they're insulated, but the big guys and the big tech companies are much more insulated. A, most of the vast majority of the products are not subject to tariffs. And B, the majority of their business comes from outside of the U.S. So who's going to get really hard here are kind of the mainline traditional. Mainline firms. Yeah. Absolutely. The Main Street economy is really going to get hit hard.

44:24You're absolutely right. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Speaking of Amazon, when we get back, we'll talk about Jeff Bezos bending the knee once again. It's not the first time to Trump.

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46:30Scott, we're back. President Trump is calling Jeff Bezos very nice and a good guy after phoning Bezos to complain about a report that Amazon was going to show how much of an item's cost comes from tariffs. The White House initial reaction was a press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, also known as Tracy Flake, calling Amazon's plan for a hostile and political act. And while Amazon first said the pricing plan was only being considered for its budget site, Amazon Hall, in a subsequent statement, the company noted the plan was never approved and it was not going to happen. They kept changing their story.

47:00Trump later told reporters that Bezos solved the problem very quickly, so it clearly was on deck to happen. Who knows where and which part of Amazon? and their credibility has declined rather significantly with this incident. Bezos has, of course, been making nice with Trump for a while now, and back in December at the Times' deal summit, he said he was optimistic about Trump's behavior in his second term and completely wrong. Let's listen. What I've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled. I guess he wants him to go to his fancy wedding in Venice in June, I guess.

47:38What do you think of this? Obviously, he's going to do it. You predicted the Fortune 500 CEOs and businesses were going to start standing up to Trump. This is not what happened here. And it looks like Paramount is going to do the same thing, Sherry Redstone, to settle a ridiculous baseless lawsuit in order to make nice to get that merger through. Was the initial Amazon plan a good idea? Should companies be transparent about these prices and put them on? Some companies are doing this. And there's an antitrust trial coming up, obviously, for Amazon. It didn't work so well for Mark to kiss up because it's still going forward.

48:15Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Bezos on Wednesday asking whether he received any promises or favors from Trump in exchange for scrapping Amazon's plan. Thoughts? Well, when the White House press secretary, she immediately said this was a hostile and political act. And why didn't they put what the prices were because of the Biden inflation? I mean, that's just such a ridiculous statement. One, in terms of Biden and inflation, that's so intellectually dishonest because of all the G7 countries, our inflation was the lowest. There was tremendous supply chain shocks from the invasion of Ukraine and COVID.

48:51And two, these guys all claim they're such free speech warriors. putting what the terrible... Airbnb and Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on... When I ordered from Caviar, which I love in New York, it used to piss me off that I wouldn't see up front how much delivery charge and service fee and all that. Airbnb came under fire. So Airbnb said, okay, we're going to put the true cost and they started breaking it out. That's transparency and it's also free speech. It is entirely reasonable for Amazon to say, all right, this is what, this is how much the tariffs are costing. It is a bit of a political statement.

49:28It's also called free speech. And two, when you start having, Biden came under fire for having one-off conversations with Metta about misinformation around COVID. And he got huge criticism. And there's some veracity to the notion that the president should not be having one-off conversations and putting pressure on individual companies. It's supposed to have systemic solutions and laws that impact the whole industry. Otherwise, it just ends up being corruption as it is now, where I don't know if you saw the latest, auto companies are now going to be exempt from a lot of these tariffs. So if you're a big company that's on his lunch calendar, or you have a popular brand, or you're gigantic, or you get to have lunch with them, you get exemption from this ridiculous behavior.

50:12And the problem is, is it's small and medium-sized business, which account for 98 % of the companies that depend upon export and import, are shit out of luck because they can't afford lobbyists and they're never going to go to Mar-a-Lago. So these individual one-off conversations are corrupt. You're not supposed to have them. And also, I got to be, I mean, you saw me. I was so excited about Bezos. I went out with all these threads saying, good for him. Good on him. And I was so excited. And then you texted me and you're like, he caved. He caved. And I'm like, oh, fuck. And I had to go back and be like, Well, false alarm, you know.

50:48No way. He's such a caver. He's a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding. Like, are you kidding? He's gone. Jeff Bezos never was there, but he's gone now. He's down the Mar-a-Lago highway and he's living down there, you know, much more so even than Elon, I think. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm actually excited and we'll talk about it maybe next week, but I'm excited about he's about to put a competitor into space. Yeah, I'm good with this blank slate. I'm good with the rocket stuff that he's competing with, but whatever. They never fail to disappoint these people. They really don't.

51:23They just don't. I just expect disappointment. You're like that. This time, you're like, this time my boyfriend's going to behave and show up and pick me up. He's changed. He sent an Uber for me. He sent an Uber? He sent an Uber for me. The stripper loves me. I swear. I swear she loves me. You could go to a strip club, Scott, but she doesn't. Yeah, I haven't been to a strip club in 20 years. I don't like strip clubs. We should go. No, we shouldn't. We should do a tour. We should do live pivots in a strip club. No, I'm not into strip clubs. All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, Scott.

51:57So have a good one.

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54:31for Scott. So Scott, up your game today. Let's go. I don't know if mine's very good, but basically one of the wonderful things about our economy is once a company establishes something resembling or supposedly monopoly power and can start implementing those rents on consumers, there's so much profits that that's like chum in the water and other sharks show up. That's the basis of competition. And hopefully if a company gets too far ahead of another, The FDC and the DOJ move in, break it up such that it can inspire more competition, lower prices, more innovation, et cetera. Competition really is one of the secrets to America's success.

55:08And my internet went out in London. I have to have crazy fast broadband. And I spent, I'm not exaggerating. I think I spent$50 ,000 or$60 ,000 to have fiber run across Regent's Park to get the kind of broadband I need. And I went out. You're that guy. Yeah, I'm that guy. I went out. I don't have satellites. It went out this weekend. And so everyone's scrambling, including Drew, to try and figure out a solve. And they went out and they bought one of those portable Starlinks. And they set it up in about four hours. It's an incredible service. I've used Starlink on a plane before. You can do FaceTime.

55:43It really is an amazing product. I think now close to two thirds of the lower satellites are owned by Starlink or SpaceX. I guess it's Starlink. And it really is an incredible product. And I'm just thrilled to see. And I think another reason why I think Amazon's going to continue probably to outperform is that they launched their first. I don't even know how you pronounce it. Is it Kuper? K-U-I-P-E-R? Cooper. I think it's Cooper. Yeah, I've met with the CEOs. They've been at it the same way they've been at the rocket stuff, but Cooper. Yeah, Cooper. So the first batch of a planned 3 ,300 Cooper satellites launched from Florida.

56:23The mission kicks off a race to rival SpaceX's massive Starlink network. And Amazon can launch five more Cooper missions this year. I think the promise of that is going to take their stock up because Starlink is just such an incredible company that essentially has monopoly power right now. Yeah, that was run. I forget who used to run that company. I met with him several times. They've been trying it. Like everyone's trying to catch Starlink, obviously, and it's a great opportunity to do so. Anyways, the brand, we talk a lot about in brand strategy, the first kind of key asset in brand strategy is awareness.

56:55About 98 % of our purchases, at least until, is that true recently? I'd like to redo this data. But up until the social graph, 98 % of your purchases are from brands you've heard of before. Just think about it. You're just less inclined to return the email of someone you don't know. Just having heard of somebody or having heard of a brand makes you much more, your purchase inclination or your purchase consideration goes up exponentially. And so I would often say the first step in any brand is just to be known. And unfortunately, we live in a society, as the philosopher, Italian philosopher Umberto Eco said, that being famous and having awareness is more important than what you're famous or have awareness for.

57:35So awareness is enormous. And it's a decent proxy for future value to be monetized. And I think the brand that's about to go from zero to 100 in the next six months is Cooper. Because it's a$10 billion project that was unveiled in 2019. It's had a lot of delays. And it's finally starting to get its kind of mojo. And I think you're going to see, they're going to start doing a good job of showing real-time footage of every launch. And then when you think about if Amazon can offer a Starlink-like service with their interface, I mean, at some point, you know what they're going to do? They're going to roll it into Prime.

58:10Anyways, Cooper from Prime is about to become one of the biggest brands and also be the most formidable competitor to the most valuable private company in the world, I think, right now, which is SpaceX. So anyways, my prediction is the brand you haven't heard of as of May 1, 2025 is going to be ubiquitous in the investment and consumer landscape by the end of the year. And that is Project Cooper, which is a$10 billion satellite effort from the good folks at Amazon. You know what? I've touched a Cooper. They brought one to show it to me. That was in high school, right? I touched it. Oh, wait. I'm sorry.

58:46I'm sorry. And then you decided, no, not for me. Interesting, but not for me. But as usual with Tesla, same thing. People are coming in and they're going to give him a run. And if he's not on his game, Elon Musk, he's got a lot of competitors headed his way because he's shown the way. And just because you're shown the way, Elon, the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers, as everybody well knows. Oh, Starlink, to be fair, Starlink's an amazing product. It's an amazing product. It is, but I'm just saying, so was Tesla three years ago, right? Sure enough. And then now there's lots of competitors.

59:17That's the beauty of competition. That's why, folks, we need an FTC and a DOJ to break companies up. You need these small, scrappy stars. Anyway, Project Cooper. That's correct. You can't take your eye off the ball. He's lucky. In that company, he has a good CEO, Gwen Chotwell, who is also much too obsequious to him. But nonetheless, she really runs that show. And that shows the good idea to have a good CEO in place. Oh, I think you're going to be outstanding on Bill Maher. Thank you. That's a good prediction. I think that'll be— I could crash and burn, but I hope not. I think I will. He likes me, like, slapping him around a little bit, just like you do.

59:51Anyway, as I said, people, give your predictions. We want to hear your predictions. Send in the predictions 30 seconds or less. We'll play them on the show. As I said, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit this prediction for the show and beat Professor Galloway or call 85551-PIVOT. And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G Conversations, Scott spoke with David Brooks. Okay, okay for you. I love, how can you, don't, don't. I do, I do. He's wonderful. I do. Okay. You know, how can you not love David Brooks? So many people don't. Are you not paying attention on the internet?

1:00:25Spiritual, smart, big talk, community. I'm glad you, he's very smart. You're right. I'm just not a fan. I'm sorry. I can be not a fan of David Brooks. I think he's just a lot. He's a writer also at The Atlantic too. Let's listen to a clip. And when I look at the Trump administration, I see a massive attempt to return us to the life of dog eat dog. the life of nasty British and short, the life where gangsters have maximum freedom to do what they want to do. And that is the evisceration of all the values of civilization that conservatism is supposed to transmit and preserve. And I think the raw lust for power that Donald Trump embodies has not only eviscerated conservatism, it's eviscerated Christianity.

1:01:10That's a very thoughtful thought. He's right. He's right. He's right. I'm excited. I'll listen to it, I promise. I really enjoyed my conversation with him. I found him to be very spiritual. By the way, we were out there with Bill Maher. Say hello to my favorites. Bill doesn't hang out with me, but the executive producers do. Sheila Griffiths, I think, and Mark Gurvitz and Dean Johnson. They're literally Friday Night Lights parents. They're like handsome people. It's a great team. They're handsome people, like good-looking people in their 40s who feel like— If I ever have a big problem, I'm just calling them and saying, can you just pretend to be my parent right now?

1:01:46And they are so nice. I'll say that. And they come in into that little green room, and they're like, we're so happy to have you. They're so nice. And I get nice emails from them. Good swag, too. Good food, good swag. And beer. I shotgunned a beer before the last one because I got so fucking nervous. Oh, you're kidding. I'm not going to do that. I think that's called alcoholism. And also my Sherpa there is a woman named Susan Bennett, who's wonderful. Yes, Susan's amazing. She's so lovely. I have to say, Bill Maher has a staff that stayed with him for a very long time. And it's a good reflection on him, even if you don't like Bill Maher.

1:02:15Greatness is in the agency of others. And that is a... He has a team. Same thing with Scott. 100 % Scott has a team that's been with him. The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people more talented than yourself. That is it. Full stop. Full stop. And having a big Cooper. And having a really big Cooper. My code team, the All Things C team was with me for 20 years, the conference team. They were all, for the most part. That's funny. The pivot team is nodding right now. They feel nice. Nodding. They're hoping. They're hoping. We'll see. We've changed. There we go. Okay, Scott. That's the show.

1:02:46We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and Ertel entered into this episode. Jim Mackle edited this video. thanks also to Juboros Miss Averio and Dan Chalon Nishat Kuruaz Vox Media's executive producer of Auto make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media you can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod we'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business tune in to see Cheech and Chong Speaker McCarthy and and and Kara Swisher

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